Category: Travel
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I just qualified as a yoga teacher… shame the world is ending
I’m writing this blog in a grassy clearing at the top of a jungle-covered mountain overlooking the bright blue Pacific ocean. I’ve just spent the last hour or so climbing some scarily steep, rubbly hills to get up here so I am disgustingly sweaty. I am also, slightly unnervingly, being circled by vultures. Still, I’m […]
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Losing my identity in the jungle
I feel like I’ve been here in Costa Rica for months. In reality it’s only been 5.5 days, and only four of them have been at yoga school, which is where I am now, by a beautiful brook in the jungle inhabited by iguanas, geckos, dragonflies, monkeys, sloths and about a bazillion unseen noisy little […]
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Fighting my inner introvert in San Jose
It’s about 2am in Costa Rica. I woke up an hour ago because my body thought it was 7am, which – at home in the UK, it was. Usually waking up naturally at the same time every day is useful for things like getting to work and going for a smug early jog, but not […]
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5 packing hacks I’ve learnt while preparing for yoga teacher training in Costa Rica
I love going on adventures but I really, really, really hate packing. I don’t know why I hate it so much; it must be my Achilles heal, or athlete’s foot. I find myself doing absolutely ANYTHING else but pack in the lead up to any impending departure. I do housework, I write poems, I start […]
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It’s official: I’m going to Costa Rica to become a yoga teacher
If you’re an average earner who’s ever spent a very large sum of money in one go with a single, terrifyingly easy click of a computer mouse, you might be familiar with the sensation I’m experiencing right now of sort of wanting to be a little bit sick. Quite a large chunk of this Sunday […]
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A trip to Oxford to see some extremely old hair grippies
The problem when I come to write in a public place – like here, in the restaurant on the rooftop of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, is that as soon as I open my laptop to type, a large portion of the English language floats lazily out of my head, along with my impetus to […]
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Falmouth, Jupiter and solitude
“Oh! You’re from Jupiter too.”I blinked at the hairy stranger. “Erm…am I?”“Yeah I can tell. I can just tell.”The hairy stranger pointed his finger across the pub table and, after a moment of hesitation, I touched the brandished finger briefly with the end of mine. I must have passed this test of Jupiter etiquette because […]
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The weirdness of flying in a plane
Something weird just happened to me. Without moving my head at all, I could flick my eyes to the left and see Eastbourne, the place in England where I live and spend most of my time, and I could flick them to the right and see the northern coast of France, the country I’m currently […]
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Daphne du Maurier wrote her first book here but I forgot to bring a pen so I’m writing this stupid blog instead
Fowey is not pronounced Fow-ee. That’s the most surprising thing about this small Cornish fishing town. Everything else is exactly as it should be. Steep narrow streets, quaint cafes offering Cornish cream teas, crooked 16th century pubs, seagulls, little shops (selling postcards, chunky jewellery, floaty dresses and those tiny wooden sailing ships you’re supposed to […]